The Annual Observance at Ground Zero, the World Trade Center

I was unable to do my annual commemoration of 9/11 in my blogs yesterday, but am doing it today.  It will be in seven of my eight blogs.

From the 911 Memorial Org. "21st Anniversary Commemoration."

The heart of the mission of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum remains the annual commemoration ceremony.  Family members of the 9/11 victims will once again gather on the Memorial plaza to read aloud the names of those killed in the 9/11  attacks and in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Throughout the ceremony, six moments of silence will be observed to mark when each of the World Trade Center towers was struck and fell and the times of the attack on the Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93.

The program will commence at 8:30 am and the first moment of silence at  8:46.

Interviews with First Responders Told the Story of 9/11

From the September 10, 2021, Chicago Tribune.

Karen Lamanna was a paramedic on an EMS unit summoned from the Bronx.  She and her partner got separated amid the confusion of Manhattan's unfamiliar streets.  But she made her way to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal where she heard pleasure craft and tugs were arriving.

She bandaged civilian victims before they were ferried to hospitals on Staten Island or New Jersey.

"A lot of firefighters wanted to be treated, and they went right back to the scene," Lamanna recalled.  "There was just no way of keeping them out."

When things slowed down, Lamanna was able to phone a friend and try to locate her partner.  Two days later, they met and exchanged hugs.

Liz and My 9/11 Experience

Every September 11, I take time out on all my blogs to remember this day.

Liz was at Ellis  Elementary School in Round Lake Beach, Illinois,  teaching 3rd graders when she was told about what had happened and was told not to say anything about it for fear her students wouldn't know what was going on and get afraid.

I found out about what happened between 1st and 2nd periods at John T. Magee Middle School in Round Lake, Illinois, as I was watching the hallway during passing time.  A fellow teacher came down the hall and was quietly telling teachers about what was happening.

That was it for my plans for the day.  The rest of that day was spent listening to the radio after I was unable to get anything on my TV.  I would locate the places on a map in the room (I taught social studies, so, of course, had lots of maps) and talked about how the the hard feelings between Arabs and non-Arabs goes back to the Roman times.

We spent the next several days talking about it and I had the students write 500 word reports on their experience since I told them this was, in effect, their Pearl Harbor or Kennedy assassination.